Possible memory leak on sql 2k5 SP2

Phenno

Hi All...
We have a customer running Navision on sql 2k5 SP2, win2k3 (x86). Latelly they reported slow Navision so I started digging and found some strange counter values that looks like memory leak...

Server has ~10GB RAM, and is set with PAE switch.
SQL Server is not with AWE at this moment only for a reason of stable system. Maximum memory set to 4GB (yes, it can use only 2GB ).
Navision DB is ~25GB large, 4.0 SP3 (originated from SP1).

When I checked performance counter i can see that:
Everything works fine until SQL Total Memory hits Target Memory (1,7GB). In that moment, Commited Bytes counter gones wild and in 20 seconds tops at 8,8GB line (thus Available Memory goes done and stops at 1,5 GB approx).

But, Private, virtual bytes do not show this increase.

Further more, I noticed nonpage pool rised in that moment, but only up to 40MB (from 37MB till that moment) and top nonpage TAG is Mmdl, part of MDL.

The similar behaviour was with AWE turned on except it than commits up to 98% free memory and hangs system totally, thus the descision to turn off AWE temporarely.

So the question is, what could be the reason for memory to eat all committed bytes in several seconds and can this be considered as memory leak?

Phenno

Oh well, if anyone ever gets to this thread with similar problem, lets him check perf counter VM ballooned memory.

For me it showed that VMware was taking rather large part od memory from this server, showing that in commited bytes and available memory but not in any other standard memory counter, excepts mentioned VM counter.